The field of the present disclosure relates generally to responding to cybersecurity threats and, more specifically, to automatically responding to cybersecurity threats to a computer network in an aviation environment.
Aviation platforms and infrastructures consist of many complex, networked, and hierarchical systems that perform various aviation computing needs. Some aviation platforms, such as aircraft standalone systems are migrating to e-Enabled networked aerospace approaches for greater operational performance efficiencies. The adoption of e-Enabled architectures and technologies increases the operational and performance efficiencies that results from being networked. The e-Enabling of aircraft systems with aerospace-specific and commercial networking solutions, enables communication between systems and across aircraft systems domain boundaries.
However, the interconnection of aircraft systems domains and improved ability to communicate with on-board and off-board systems increases the risk of current and emerging cybersecurity attacks. Furthermore, aviation embedded systems and controllers utilize General Purpose Computing (GPC) hardware and commercial software operating systems to reduce cost and provide added functionality. The use of GPC hardware and commercial software increases the risk of cybersecurity attacks that leverage existing vulnerabilities of the deployed software and hardware implementations. Hardware-based redundancy may reduce the risks of outages, but additional hardware is used very sparingly within aircraft due to weight issues, where every additional pound could cost tens of thousands of dollars in fuel expenses over time.